Design, manufacture, and assembly of an electronics system, such as a computer system, includes many steps. Because of the very small sizes of electronic components, and their connection via miniature conductive traces on circuit boards, it is becoming more difficult to verify proper design and/or assembly of an electronics system.
Thermal testing in a partially or fully assembled electronics system is time consuming and awkward because of the small size of each component and the compact arrangement of those components together in the electronics system. In particular, introducing external measurement equipment, including thermocouples extending from a wiring assembly, for temperature testing of electronic components is expensive, error-prone, and labor intensive. In addition, this technique makes it difficult to re-use those components for other development activities.
Incorporating thermal sensing circuitry internally within electronic components tends to frustrate primary design goals of the components of the electronics system to maximize function while minimizing size. Internal thermal sensing circuitry also requires calibration and testing. Moreover, adding such circuitry into a component occupies scarce space within the component, as well as occupying pins and traces used to communicate to and from the component. Accordingly, introducing internal circuitry for thermal testing can result in eliminating some functions of the component, or increasing the size of the component.
For these reasons, conventional thermal testing of components and/or electronics systems hampers efficient, accurate evaluation of those components and/or electronics systems.